Hacker News Board Hacker News, browsed like a classic message board
Live data from Hacker News

A SpaceX Falcon 9 rocket has exploded at Cape Canaveral

techcrunch.com

Post reply on HN
Print view View original

191–200 of 560 posts

Re: A SpaceX Falcon 9 rocket has exploded at Cape Canaveral

#191

Post by matt-attack »

timdiggerm wrote: post #133
300bps wrote: post #105

Earlier quoted context omitted.

You're advocating the Broken Window Fallacy. http://www.investopedia.com/ask/answers/08/broken-window-fal...

Even if they are (which is apparently disputed), pointing out that someone is using a fallacy does not make them automatically wrong. Next time, you should try saying something more substantive than "Fallacy!"

> using a fallacy does not make them automatically wrong

I thought that is precisely what using a fallacy makes you. It's what the word fallacy means. It essentially means a "false statement".

Re: A SpaceX Falcon 9 rocket has exploded at Cape Canaveral

#193

Post by dandelany »

nateberkopec wrote: post #65
artursapek wrote: post #51

Looks like they had a payload go with it. Sad. > "SpaceX confirm Amos-6 was aboard the Falcon 9 and was lost in the explosion." https://twitter.com/NASASpaceflight/status/77135388623807283...

I know nothing about space - why are they doing tests, where the rocket could possibly explode or fail, with the payload on board?

My understanding is that it is up to the customer whether they want to integrate the payload before or after the hot fire test. Integrating before means higher chance of an incident like this, while integrating after means significantly longer turnaround between the hot fire and launch.

Re: A SpaceX Falcon 9 rocket has exploded at Cape Canaveral

#194

Post by garyclarke27 »

artursapek wrote: post #51

Looks like they had a payload go with it. Sad. > "SpaceX confirm Amos-6 was aboard the Falcon 9 and was lost in the explosion." https://twitter.com/NASASpaceflight/status/77135388623807283...

How stupid, to test with satalite on-board?? esp considering how expensive they are, they should use a dummy the same size and weight. You can't test satalite functionality on the ground so a completly pointless risk to include it.

Re: A SpaceX Falcon 9 rocket has exploded at Cape Canaveral

#195

Post by notahacker »

dogma1138 wrote: post #176
brianwawok wrote: post #159

Earlier quoted context omitted.

So you would rather pay $600 million per launch with 95% chance of success vs $200 million per launch with 93% chance of success? There is no such thing a 100% chance of success, everyone has a chance of failure. I would not put ESA more than a few % more reliable. Math says your satellite would need to be really expensive for the price difference to be worth it.

Depending on the cost of failure, however for virtually every mission the 600M$ is a winner this is a no-brainer. That "little" difference has huge huge economic repercussions, cost of insurance, ease of financing, and many other things. Not to mention that a satellite going boom can kill an operator if it doesn't have a backup. This isn't an insurance case where you get your money and try again the week after, build…

The flip side is that estimating the reliability of a launch vehicle is an inexact science at best given the paucity of actual launches to provide data points (frankly, there was no real way of assessing the reliability of the Falcon 9 other than to note that launch failures or partial failures tend to occur more in the first couple of years of launches of a new rocket type is backed by a reasonable amount of evidence across the history of other launch vehicle programmes)

Re: A SpaceX Falcon 9 rocket has exploded at Cape Canaveral

#196

Post by [deleted] »

sickbeard wrote: post #180
dogma1138 wrote: post #166

Earlier quoted context omitted.

It's a deal breaker most likely, the terms of the deal were based on AMOS-6 becoming operational by march 2017. There has been high level of criticism in Israel about the deal as many seen this as giving up it's sovereignty over its space platforms even tho under the deal the all operations of spacecom platforms would be still handled from Israel proper, I'm sure the r/conspiracies is already booming with sabotage th…

So sabotage could be a factor?

[deleted]

Re: A SpaceX Falcon 9 rocket has exploded at Cape Canaveral

#197

Post by dandelany »

tarsinge wrote: post #139
ars wrote: post #66

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Tell that to the people in Africa who will soon have no internet access once AMOS-2 fails. This payload, AMOS-6, was a replacement for the soon to fail AMOS-2 which among other things is part of a Facebook initiative to provide internet access in parts of Africa. I am not aware of any replacement in the works for it, so that service may just shut down, and who knows if it will ever start back up. So while this might…

> provide internet access in parts of Africa If you mean internet.org wheter it's a loss or not is debatable

Internet.org was only a part of AMOS-6's planned internet bandwidth. Per Wikipedia "36 regional spotbeams with a throughput of about 18 Gbit/s — on Amos-6 to provide service for Facebook’s Internet.org and a new Eutelsat subsidiary focusing on African businesses. Costs would be divided in approximately equal shares between Eutelsat and Facebook."

Re: A SpaceX Falcon 9 rocket has exploded at Cape Canaveral

#199

Post by dogma1138 »

wyager wrote: post #187
dogma1138 wrote: post #185

Earlier quoted context omitted.

It takes years to build a satellite, the bus, and every component is purposely built each component and the satellite itself goes through months of testing and even if they could build one within 6 months all of the contracts would expire by then which will require Spacecom to open the bids again. All of the contracts were based on AMOS-6 being operational by a given date, AMOS-6 has been "under construction" for pro…

Would it go faster the second time around, since they've already validated the design?

The design might be the "easy" part, these are 6 tons of one off highly specialized components with a huge lead time. Each component is custom and built for order by a contractor the lead time on some of them can be years simply because there aren't that many companies that design and build space systems. That combined with the fact that they need to go to each subcontractor and ask them to bid again after Spacecom finds a way to finance it (there is no way the insurance payout is anywhere near the actual cost of the satellite) would probably mean that the time it takes to build a new one isn't that different than it was to build the original.

Think of it like this if you total your McLaren P1-GTR there isn't an easy way to get a new one ;)

Re: A SpaceX Falcon 9 rocket has exploded at Cape Canaveral

#200

Post by mikeash »

matt-attack wrote: post #191
timdiggerm wrote: post #133

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Even if they are (which is apparently disputed), pointing out that someone is using a fallacy does not make them automatically wrong. Next time, you should try saying something more substantive than "Fallacy!"

> using a fallacy does not make them automatically wrong I thought that is precisely what using a fallacy makes you. It's what the word fallacy means. It essentially means a "false statement".

Fallacy means faulty reasoning, not a false statement. It is possible to use faulty reasoning to arrive at a correct statement. For example, "The sun rises each day, because if it didn't then everyone would die." That's the fallacy of an appeal to consequences, yet the conclusion (the sun rises each day) is correct.
Post reply on HN